Finno-Ugric World Seeks a New Capital of Culture for 2019

Youth
Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples (MAFUN) and URALIC Centre for Indigenous
Peoples today open the second 4-year cycle of the Finno-Ugric Capital of
Culture programme and the competition for the title of Finno-Ugric Capital of
Culture 2019. Winner of the competition will be announced on April 8, 2018, in
Obinitsa (Estonia).

Established in
2013, the programme of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture is a flagship initiative
of MAFUN and URALIC Centre that aims to raise awareness of Finno-Ugric and
Samoyedic peoples as well as Uralic languages, to strengthen collective
Finno-Ugric identity and to stimulate sustainable local development in
different corners of the Finno-Ugric world.

To date, the title
of Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture has been awarded to five villages or cities:
Udmurtian village of Bygy (2014),
Seto village of Obinitsa (2015),
Hungarian village Iszkaszentgyörgy
and City of Veszprém (2016) and
Karelian village of Vuokkiniemi
(2017). In all cases, the title of Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture has helped
raise the profile of the title-holder both domestically and internationally, including
via cultural tourism. Perhaps even more importantly, being a Finno-Ugric
Capital of Culture has strengthened local communities and provided them with
new opportunities for development. The programme has been warmly received both
in the Finno-Ugric world and beyond, and has been described as a good example
of the promotion of indigenous peoples’ cultural rights by Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples.

Given the positive
results and encouraging feedback of the first four years of the Finno-Ugric
Capitals of Culture programme, MAFUN and URALIC Centre are today announcing the
start of the second cycle of the programme (2019-2022) along with the
competition for the title of Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture 2019. For this
competition, villages, towns and cities from any Finno-Ugric country or region
are welcome to apply, except national capitals (in the case of Estonia, Finland
and Hungary) or regional capitals in the Russian Federation. The only region
that is excluded from the current competition is Karelia, given that the
Karelian village of Vuokkiniemi is the most recent title-holder (Karelian
applicants will be again eligible for the 2020 title).

Application
materials of the Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture 2019 competition are available
on the programme’s website www.uralic.org.
The deadline for written applications is March 1, 2018 and the winner of the
competition will be selected on April 8 in Obinitsa. The competition of
Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture 2019 has been supported by the Kindred Peoples’
Programme of Estonia.